I just stumbled upon a Youtube video of $24,000 worth of sun and moon booster boxes being opened upon its release a couple of years ago. I’m not into the business of buying booster boxes and selling singles. My thought was, how do you break even opening modern boxes…and really any booster box for that matter?
I could see if you opened an old booster box and happened to hit the jackpot and got the key card, got it graded, received a gem mint…then you could make your money back and then some but I was just wondering how anyone is making their money back when I can go on tcgplayer and buy them for so cheap? Is it more about making a Youtube video for everyone to watch or is there really $ to be made? If so how?
Other people could answer this a lot better than me probably but I believe the margins are razor thin. They get the boxes fairly cheap these days by ordering so many. After its all said and done factoring in your time and effort I don’t think the profit is much.
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if u have a huge youtube following im sure its worth it. hell write the boxes off as an expense to ur business with nifty accounting. i dont know how ypurube works at that level but unlisted leaf has a nice car so who knows.
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Selling singles to players. Where do you think the sellers on tcgplayer are getting their inventory?
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You pretty much have to already have a large enough following to sell all of the cards as singles, and even then I doubt that the margins are sustainable as a sole form of income. Derium’s has an online store (and I think has/ had an irl store) where they sell their cards, and they are able to buy their products at larger discounts because they buy in huge bulk.
Any regular ole Timmy on the side of the road pays like $100 for a booster box and has to bulk out every card they can’t sell individually. NEVER underestimate the power of selling commons… The Pokemon TCG is very notorious for being cheap to play b/c the commons and uncommons dominate the decks. So they are constantly selling those cards at .25-1.00 …
If they get some sort of Distributor pricing for a box in the $70 range for buying a ton and then use a cash back credit card to get an extra 2% or so back on the purchase they are already way ahead of the average Timmy. They have large stores where they are able to sell the com/unc cards and the stuff nobody else can sell, they sell for full retail and not some discounted secondary market price for the hot cards, plus selling card codes from the packs which are usually around 40-50 cent each when a new set is released. They end up doing ok but it is still a very thin margin.
This is the cause for a lot of failed TCG games. The product doesn’t produce enough value for stores to make money on and so the store can’t afford to open and sell the product - thus the card game fails.
Hope this sheds some light on the topic just a little. I’m not an expert and there are many, many other factors involved.
SIDE NOTE: I know a store that sells through Amazon as their main focus and you would not believe the orders that people place for cards you thought NOBODY wanted. $10 orders of common cards that we throw in a box and sell for .50 … They practically get bulk donated to them and pay at most .03 a card (current rate) and sell for .20-.80 on a lot of them. The profit margin IS NUTS! Unlike buying a competitive top dollar staple for $20 when the card is $25 and taking a small percent win.
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I know some people who do those 50 card lots on ebay and make heaps. One ex/gx/lv x or whatever and 50 commons and sell for $20, you make hand over fist.
Have you found any Lost Thunder boxes at retail lately?
Custom catcher (uncommon) is currently selling for about $10. You could pull 2-4 from a single box. That’s $20-40 from just 2-4 uncommons!
There’s always profit to be made, sometimes it just takes a while.
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Modern is less about the product and more about the businesses structure. Outside of the current hidden fates rip and flip moment we are experiencing, majority of product is not easily profitable. The strategies mentioned above rely on having an actual store with employees. There is money to be made in selling bulk, but you need employees organizing and listing everything. There isn’t enough time in a day + margin to do it yourself.
Also Japanese modern product is currently experiencing more demand than supply. My last pre-order was 20 cases, and was cut to a third. This has been happening for over a year. The opportunity cost is margins are better, but you can’t consistently acquire enough supply. When the opposite was true, more supply than demand, the margins were razor thin.
Ultimately for 90% of people, no there isn’t money to be made, and if there is its usually negligible or temporary.
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Dat free Patreon tho
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